Watercooled noob wants advice...

Hi there...

I'm looking to make a move and change my air cooled Q6600 G0 to water cooled one.

However my science teacher always told me never to mix electricity and water together and putting water into my beloved PC worries me !

My current rig:

Antec 900
IP35 Pro
Q6600 G0 (OC'd)
Asus 8800GTS (OC'd)
4GB OCZ Reapers

My requirements will be:

Near silent as my Tuniq 120 tower is loud mixed with the fans of the Antec
VERY easy to setup
VERY low maintenance
And of course.......Value for money !!

Any ideas?

Value for money != Water.

You will spend less money getting either a self-contained loop*, or upgrading your system to something more modern like the i5 (when it comes out).

Plus, you can get a near slient system if you do some simple things like upgrading your fans to low-noise, slow speed ones (Noctua S12Bs for example), suspend your HDDs using rubber bands in 5.25" slots, and add sound proofing. Such an upgrade can be quite cost effective if done properly, i.e. less than £100. Whereas doing a water loop will cost between £200 and £400 and will not elimate noise from the following, no matter how much money you throw at it.

• HDDs
• Optical Drives
• Fans (you will STILL needs fans on any water cooling system, unless you buy a MASSIVE radiator, like one of these)

*If you are getting a self contained loop you don't need an advice, just check that it supports your socket type, buy, install.

Personally I rather like the look of this the H50 cooler (distributed) by corsair.

http://img.hexus.net/v2/cooling/Corsair/H50/Hydro.jpg

There is (of course) review of it on Hexus. Seems a simple way to get a lot of the advantages of water cooling without the hassle, not sure about the recommendation of mounting blowing into the case. To me one of the "attractions" of the cooler was the warm air did not have to float around in the case before being expelled. Blowers did this for GPUs its about time they did it for CPUs.